quarta-feira, 10 de dezembro de 2008

Obama’s Effort on Ethics Bill Had Role in Governor’s Fall

Mr. Obama used leverage that he had seldom employed — publicly, anyway — and strongly urged Mr. Jones to bypass Mr. Blagojevich and approve the ethics bill, banning the so-called pay-for-play system of influence peddling in Illinois. When asked at the time how Mr. Obama had come to be involved, Mr. Jones replied, “He’s a friend.”

In a sequence of events that neatly captures the contradictions of Barack Obama’s rise through Illinois politics, a phone call he made three months ago to urge passage of a state ethics bill indirectly contributed to the downfall of a fellow Democrat he twice supported, Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich.

Mr. Obama placed the call to his political mentor, Emil Jones Jr., president of the Illinois Senate. Mr. Jones was a critic of the legislation, which sought to curb the influence of money in politics, as was Mr. Blagojevich, who had vetoed it. But after the call from Mr. Obama, the Senate overrode the veto, prompting the governor to press state contractors for campaign contributions before the law’s restrictions could take effect on Jan. 1, prosecutors say.

Tipped off to Mr. Blagojevich’s efforts, federal agents obtained wiretaps for his phones and eventually overheard what they say was scheming by the governor to profit from his appointment of a successor to the United States Senate seat being vacated by President-elect Obama. One official whose name has long been mentioned in Chicago political circles as a potential successor is Mr. Jones, a machine politician who was viewed as a roadblock to ethics reform but is friendly with Mr. Obama.

Beyond the irony of its outcome, Mr. Obama’s unusual decision to inject himself into a statewide issue during the height of his presidential campaign was a reminder that despite his historic ascendancy to the White House, he has never quite escaped the murky and insular world of Illinois politics. It is a world he has long navigated, to the consternation of his critics, by engaging in a kind of realpolitik, Chicago-style, which allowed him to draw strength from his relationships with important players without becoming compromised by their many weaknesses.

By the time Mr. Obama intervened on the ethics measure, his relationship with Mr. Blagojevich, always defined more by political proximity than by personal chemistry, had cooled as the governor became increasingly engulfed in legal troubles. There is nothing in the criminal complaint unsealed Tuesday to indicate that Mr. Obama knew anything about plans to seek money and favors in exchange for his Senate seat; he has never been implicated in any other “pay to play” cases that have emerged from the long-running investigation of the Blagojevich administration.

But like those previous cases, this latest one features political characters who figure in various stages of Mr. Obama’s climb from little-known state senator to presidential candidate, and who have since become politically radioactive because of corruption scandals. Some of those relationships posed a threat to Mr. Obama during the presidential campaign, forcing him to return tens of thousands of dollars in tainted campaign contributions and providing fodder for attack ads by rival candidates.

Though extreme examples, they were emblematic of the path cut by Mr. Obama through Chicago politics, where he became known for making alliances of convenience with personalities that seemed antithetical to his self-image as a progressive reformer. His political roots were in the left-leaning neighborhood of Hyde Park, but at key moments in his career he did not hesitate to form relationships with politicians who were fixtures of the Democratic machine.

When he ran for the United States Senate in 2004, he aggressively courted Mr. Jones, a sewer inspector turned legislator who had clawed his way up through ward politics and was viewed as something of a kingmaker in the Illinois Democratic Party. He also formed a good working relationship with Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago, a symbol of establishment politics with whom Mr. Obama had never been close.

Mr. Obama was an adviser to Mr. Blagojevich’s first campaign for governor, in 2002, and endorsed him again in 2006, even though by that time questions had been raised about the possible selling of state jobs. Mr. Obama has also credited one of Mr. Blagojevich’s closest confidants, Antoin Rezko, a businessman who was convicted of corruption charges this year, with helping him get his own start in politics.

Mr. Rezko was among the first to contribute to Mr. Obama’s earliest State Senate race, in 1995, and later became a major fund-raiser for his campaign for the United States Senate. Mr. Rezko was known around Chicago as a collector of politicians, and he did not hesitate to make the most of his high-level contacts. The New York Times reported last year that when he was entertaining Middle Eastern financiers at a Four Seasons hotel in Chicago, he arranged for Mr. Blagojevich and Mr. Obama to drop by, separately and on different occasions, to impress his guests.

Mr. Rezko derived his political influence mainly from his close relationship with Mr. Blagojevich, who relied on him to recommend loyal campaign contributors for state appointments to boards and commissions, according to the complaint unsealed on Tuesday. But as Mr. Rezko’s legal troubles escalated, Illinois politicians who had previously found him useful, including Mr. Obama, disavowed him and started returning his campaign donations.

Mr. Obama’s relationship with Mr. Blagojevich was not much better when he made the decision to call Mr. Jones in September about the stalled ethics bill. For Mr. Obama, the move marked an unusual return to Illinois politics, turf from which he had studiously worked to distance himself throughout the presidential race. At the time, one week before the first presidential debate of the general election campaign, Republicans were trying to tarnish him in the eyes of voters by attempting to link him to Chicago’s history of corrupt politics.

Mr. Obama used leverage that he had seldom employed — publicly, anyway — and strongly urged Mr. Jones to bypass Mr. Blagojevich and approve the ethics bill, banning the so-called pay-for-play system of influence peddling in Illinois. When asked at the time how Mr. Obama had come to be involved, Mr. Jones replied, “He’s a friend.”

When the Illinois Senate passed the measure by 55 to 0 on Sept. 22, with Mr. Jones reversing his position, Mr. Obama praised the move as one creating “a tougher ethics law that will reduce the influence of money over our state’s political process.” Mr. Obama’s intervention deepened a rift between him and Mr. Blagojevich that had been growing for some time.

When Mr. Blagojevich left Congress in 2002, he talked openly about the notion of running for president one day. After he was elected governor, and after Senator John Kerry lost the presidential race in 2004, he began eyeing a potential run in 2008.

It was short-lived. The federal corruption investigation that eventually led to Mr. Rezko’s indictment, and Tuesday’s charges against Mr. Blagojevich, had already begun to taint the governor’s administration. And by 2006, Mr. Obama had eclipsed the governor as a plausible national candidate, dashing his presidential aspirations.

The criminal complaint unsealed Tuesday underscored the acrimony between the two men. Recorded telephone calls showed Mr. Blagojevich being far less than respectful when discussing the president-elect and voicing frustration at his inability to advance beyond the governor’s office.

“If I don’t get what I want and I’m not satisfied with it, then I’ll just take the Senate seat myself,” the governor said, according to the criminal complaint. Later, he said the Senate seat was a “valuable thing — you just don’t give it away for nothing.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Blagojevich was busily trying to shake loose up to $2.5 million in campaign donations, much of it from contributors with business before the state, according to federal prosecutors. The governor’s goal was to bring in the money before the end of the year, the complaint said, “before a new state ethics law goes into effect on Jan. 1, 2009.”

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Quotes

“When I take that oath of office, there will be kids all over this country who don’t really think that all paths are open to them, who will believe they can be anything they want to be. And I think the world will look at America a little differently.” - Barack Obama, 2006

"I didn't come here to debate the past. I came here to deal with the future ... We must learn from history. But we can't be trapped by it." - Barack Obama, Summit of the Americas 2009

“To those who would tear the world down: we will defeat you. This is our moment. This is our time.” - Barack Obama

"Sasha and Malia, I love you both more than you can imagine, and you have earned the new puppy that's coming with us to the White House." - Barack Obama

"'I think people will see that I'm not afraid to have folks around me who complement my strengths and who are independent. I'm not a believer in a government of yes-men. I think one of the failures of the early Bush Administration was being surrounded by people who were unwilling to deliver bad news, or who were prone to simply feed the president information that confirmed his own preconceptions." - Barack Obama

"I would not be running for President if I didn't believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation - the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election." - Barack Obama

"The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice." - Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Electing a black president says around the world that you can overcome old wounds. I’ve said in our case, We have a birth defect, but it can be overcome." - Condoleezza Rice

"Things do change. There is a God. They do get better." - David Dinkins

“I think that Senator Obama brings a fresh set of eyes, fresh set of ideas to the table. I think that Senator McCain, as gifted as he is, is essentially going to execute the Republican agenda, the orthodoxy of the Republican agenda with a new face and a maverick approach to it, and he’d be quite good at it, but I think we need more than that.” - Colin Powell (endorsing Obama on 19/10/08)

"I will vote for the individual I think that brings the best set of tools to the problems of 21st-century America and the 21st-century world regardless of party, regardless of anything else other than the most qualified candidate." - Colin Powell

"The United States of America is an extraordinary country. It is a country that has overcome many, many, now years, decades, actually a couple of centuries, of trying to make good on its principles. And I think what we are seeing is an extraordinary expression of the fact that 'We the People' is beginning to mean all of us." - Condoleezza Rice

"[Obama] is running for president of all Americans, not just African-Americans. [We] must be careful not to segregate Senator Obama and impose some litmus test that is unfair and unproductive." - Rev. Al Sharpton

"Welcome to the murky world of modern racism, where most of the open animus has been replaced by a shadowy bias that is difficult to measure. As Obama gently put it in his race speech, today's racial 'resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company.' However, they can be — and possibly will be — expressed in the privacy of the voting booth." - Charles M. Blow

"Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values: that you work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond and you do what you say you're going to do; that you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don't know them and even if you don't agree with them. And Barack and I set out to build lives guided by these values and pass them on to the next generation, because we want our children and all children in this nation to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them." - Michelle Obama

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"I would not be running for President if I didn't believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation - the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election."- Barack Obama

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